Coggle – A Collaborative Teamwork Solution

Coggle is a collaborative work solution that groups of people can use to drag-and-drop images from their desktops into interactive mind-maps. Ideally suited for visual thinkers, Coggle tracks all the changes that are made to group documents and enable users to revert back to previous versions at any point during the collaboration process.

Create a new “coggle”—the term used to describe the platform’s interactive diagrams—and give your coggle a name. From there, you can start adding as much text as necessary to get your point across. Text and images are linked together with branches, creating hierarchically-structured diagrams. Customize the colors of your branches to help keep individual topics separate within the context of a larger coggle. You also have the option to drag the branches in your diagram around to edit the look or structure of your coggle. Along with adding basic text, you can also drag-and-drop images into your diagram at any point.

Although you can create diagrams by yourself, Coggle is designed to be used by teams. To avoid losing control over your product once it’s been shared with collaborators, click over to “history” mode and search through previous versions. You can make a copy of any previous version, and you can find out exactly who made which changes to your shared project.

Practical Uses:

• Create a mind-map to visualize a large project
• Brainstorm with your team
• Work together with remote colleagues
• Track the complete history of any collaborative group document

Insider Tips:

• Adjust the colors of each branch in your diagram
• Edit coggles in any modern browser
• Drag-and-drop images into your coggle
• Review the exact time when specific changes were made

What we liked:

• Coggle helps people visualize complex concepts
• Public links allow people to view diagrams without logging in
• Groups of remote workers can collaborate in real-time
• Coggle has made it easy for people to create new diagrams from scratch

What we didn’t like:

• When too many collaborators are working at once, it can be hard not to inadvertently overwrite other people’s changes

Alternatives:

• Memofon – http://www.memofon.com
• Mohiomap – https://www.moh.io
• Thoughtboxes – https://www.thoughtbox.es

Company Info:

• Launched: January 2013
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Founded by: James Crosby
• Web site: https://coggle.it

Costs:

• Free